Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 10.djvu/60

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52


NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. x. JULY 19, 1902.


the day after Trinity Sunday. It is found with increasing frequency in both books and newspapers. I have noticed lately the following among other instances : Vaux's 'Church Folk-lore,' p. 19; Baring - Gould's ' Urith,' chap, xxxix. ; Stubbs's ' History of the University of Dublin,' p. 157, et passim ; Journal of Education for July, 1890, p. 377.

1 have before me also a printed notice of a meeting to beheld at Trinity House, London, which begins thus : " Monday, the llth prox., being Trinity Monday," &c. I am under the impression that the term is also used in Malory's 'Morte d'Arthur'; but I cannot put my finger upon the passage just now.

ALEX. LEEPER. Trinity College, Melbourne University.

BYRON'S GRANDFATHER (9 th S. ix. 509). On p. 3 of the first volume of Byron's ' Letters and Journals ' (1898, ed. Rowland E. Prothero) it is stated that in 1785 Miss Catherine Gordon married Capt. John Byron at Bath, " where, it may be mentioned, her father had, some years before, committed suicide." In the 'D.N.B.,' moreover, Mr. Leslie Stephen, in his account of the poet, says that the saia Capt. John Byron diea at Valenciennes,

2 Aug., 1791, possibly by his own hand " (Jeaf- freson, i. 48 ; Harness, p. 33 ; Letter No. 460 in Moore's ' Life of Byron ' implicitly denies suicide). A. R. BAYLEY.

HONORIFICABILITUDINITAS (9 th S. ix. 243,

371, 494). MR. GEORGE STRONACH'S note on this word and the quotation he gives from the 4 Complaynt of Scotland ' much interested me, as it bears out exactly what I wrote in a paper some time back on Shakspere's classical Knowledge. Perhaps I may be allowed to quote from my paper, which has not been printed :

" The splendid procession- word honorificabilitudi- nitatibn* ( ' L. L. L. ,' V. i. ) has been pressed into the ser- vice of the Baconian theory as containing the cipher initio hi ludi Fr. Bacono, or some other silly trash. The word was no doubt a stock example of the longest Latin word, as the Aristophanic compound 6p9o$oiroovKo<f>avToSiicoTa\aiir(i>poi is of the longest Greek word, and was very probably a reminiscence of Shakspere's school days, as the distich

Conturbabantur Constantinopolitani Innumerabilibus sollicitudinibus is of our own."

I am pleased indeed to find that my suppo- sition has hit the bull's-eye. Your corre- spondent Q. V.'s warning (under the same heading) against accepting the statements of the " Shaconians " without proof is a timely one. Mrs. Pott appears to be a particularly unveracious supporter of the Baconian theory,


as has already been shown in your columns with regard to the expressions "Good mor- row," &c., and as I have myself found in regard to her statement that, apart from technical expressions, 97 per cent, of the vocabulary of Shakspere and Bacon is identi- cal. Excluding words common to all writers of that period, I should think Shakspere and Bacon have not 2 per cent, of their vocabulary in common. However, I shall soon be in a position to state the proportion exactly, as I nave made a list of all the words in Bacon that strike a reader familiar with Shakspere.

REGINALD HAINES. Uppingham.

COCKADE OF GEORGE I. (9 th S. ix. 428). This question has been discussed several times in the columns of ' N. & Q.,' but, I think, without satisfactory results. Among other authorities I may refer to Sir J. Ber- nard Burke, Ulster King-of-Arms, who gave it as his opinion (only) that commissioned officers of volunteer corps are entitled to the privilege of having cockades in their servants' hats. The black cockade was said to have been introduced by George I. See ' N. & Q.,' 1 st S. iii., xi. ; 2 nd S. vii., viii., ix. ; 3 rd S. vii.

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN. 71, Brecknock Road.

OLD WOODEN CHEST (9 th S. v. 88, 195, 275, 465 ; vi. 392 ; ix. 517). At Halesowen in Shropshire there is a chest hollowed out of the trunk of a tree. It is shaped like a trough and bound with iron. Another chest hewn out of a single block of wood exists, or recently did exist, in the church at Llanabar. These old chests appear to have been used originally as offertory boxes. In 2 Kings xii. 9 we read :

" Jehoiada the priest took a chest, and bored a hole in the lid of it, and set it beside the altar, on the right side as one cometh into the house of the Lord : and the priests that kept the door put therein all the money that was brought into the house of the Lord."

In this verse we have possibly the origin of these offertory chests. CHARLES HIATT.

To the examples your correspondents have cited of church, chests hewn out of solid blocks of oak may be added the chest, at Llanfeuno in North Wales, and Penallt, near Monmouth, in South Wales. The Welsh tongue has a special name for such chests- viz., " prenvol," "tree-bowl," from pren + bol, sometimes contracted to "prennol." The example at Llanfeuno is popularly called "Cyff Beuno" (St. Beuno's coffer), "cyff" meaning a trunk, particularly the trunk of a tree. This one was a money-chest, designed